IJSP Number 4, 2022

17 relationships, contrary descriptors were common fare (e.g., un-invested, unsupportive, disaffirming). Relational safety and trust emerged as crucial foundational pillars in the unfolding of favourable supervision process and outcome, contributing to the creation of a liberating learning space for these supervisees. Our findings correspond with multicultural research that has repeatedly affirmed and reaffirmed the key role played by the supervision relationship in making supervision work (or not) [2, 11, 45]. Cultivating constructive connection appears of paramount supervisory importance in working with international supervisees, and we highly recommend that supervisors strive to forever forge and consistently nurture that connection over the course of the supervision process. Lacking such connection, the supervisor-supervisee dyad becomes far more apt to suffer and be compromised, if not fail altogether. To paraphrase Hess et al. [44], the relationship may well be everything (or at least hugely significant) in the successful supervision of any international student [46]. 6.2. Leading with Cultural Humility The word, understanding, seems to loudly stand out in reading over these international supervisees ’ comments. Where the supervisor understood or genuinely worked to understand the supervisee, such effort was clearly greatly appreciated and seemingly benefitted both parties. International supervisees spoke of feeling heard, valued, respected, and empowered, their learning accordingly facilitated. But where misunderstandings loomed large, those most often appeared to revolve around the very issues with which international students typically struggle: language barriers, cultural differences, acculturation, isolation and lack of support [11]. Cultural insensitivities and microaggressions, if not outright supervisor ethnocentrism, were sometimes on display in the supervision relationship; where present, those negative events appeared to too often go unaddressed and have untoward ripple effects on the relationship ’s remainder. As one international supervisee put it, “Our supervision was n ever the same…” .In all such cases, the effects of regressive supervision dyads(i.e., where the supervisee is at a more advanced racial/ethnic identity stage than the supervisor) may well have been in play [22]. Supervisors ’ misunderstandings also had potential to affect international students ’ well-being and lived supervisory experience. Anxiety, worry, fear, and being on guard, emotional threads that often were present in supervisee narratives, appeared further compounded when such supervision misunderstandings emerged, thereby creating the perfect storm for “learning lockdown.” The very core of any supervisor misunderstandings, simply put, largely seemed cultural in nature, or involved a mis-culturing of the other. For instance, consider this supervisee ’ s responses: “…supervisor(s) do not understand nor see the uniqueness of my cultural values…and deemed it as underdeveloped area.” When such views come to define the supervision process, both supervisees ’ learning and client development fall victim, respective casualties of compromised (supervisor) competence and (therapist/supervisee) care ” . Perhaps we as supervisors are best served when we “…recognize and acknowledge our own cross-cultural ignorance and adopt a sense of careful scepticism towards our own beliefs about knowledge construction [47, p. 375]. ”